Posts Tagged ‘Solidarity’

With the ubiquitousness of all of our modern technology, we sometimes forget how out of sync we can get with the natural rhythms of life… All of our machines: our automobiles that allow us to traverse once great distances in time periods measured in minutes not days, our electronic communication devices that enable us to be in constant contact with one another in even the remotest of areas, and of course our air conditioning, a phenomenon that I – as a descendent of ancestors who hailed from a cool island set high on the apogee of our globe – am most particularly grateful for. One hot spell like the first of the summer – such as the one we just passed through – is all it takes to jar us into recalling just how much our modern way of living has impacted the way we move, the way we live, the way we think. It seems sometimes that the possession of all of the accoutrements of modernity lends itself to a sort of schizophrenic way of living – that unless we elect to go “crunchy” and live “off the grid” as it were – we are doomed to live in a connected world of isolation; one that moves too quickly even as time appears to be dragging by. So many of us are balancing what often seem like barely reconcilable opposites: by way of example, for me on a professional level, I use contemporary technologies of wireless and satellite communication to spread principles based upon ancient wisdom thousands of years old; and on a personal level, I strive as best I can to live out the mandate that Jesus gave us in Matthew 25– to care for the least of my brothers and sisters – in ways both a concrete and personal….all in a society whose technology seems to conversely alienate us from each other even as it connects us in ways our ancestors could scarcely imagine. This is not to say that the technology-dense circumstances of our modern day living has rendered our human agency meaningless: our machines might make our lives simultaneously more complex and more simple, but at the bottom line, it is still our own choices that drive our decisions and actions in this life. Now while modern technology has certainly impacted the pace of our lives, I don’t want to imply that life before the advent of the World Wide Web was without its own complexity. One example I can think of comes from my own personal history, and it took place not quit in the Stone Age but not too far after that when I finally declared my Major in my sophomore year at Manhattan College. I attended that school for many reasons, but one most particularly because it was my father’s Alma Mater, and it had given him a terrific education in business and accounting which enabled him to eventually open up his own accounting practice and become quite successful. I think that when I first went to the school, the assumption was that I would follow in a similar path. I often smile to my self when I think back on what my fiscally and politically conservative Certified Public Accountant Dad must have thought when I told him that I was going to be taking a major in Peace Studies!

But actually – in retrospect – the stretch between my father’s career and my decision to dedicate my professional life to the promotion of the values of peace and justice are not as far apart as they might seem at first blush, for you see the majority of my father’s clients came from the world of not-for-profit human services and healthcare – and the majority of those he worked with were Catholic. Growing up, this allowed me to be introduced to a tremendous amount of good and dedicated women and men – leaders in their respective fields – whose professional lives were devoted to the care of the most vulnerable of persons. In their professional, and fiscal – and sometimes political – lives, many of these men and women were quite conservative; they understood that despite the best and most lofty intentions, the care of human persons – especially in their most vulnerable state – requires resources and capital, both human and monetary. And yet – at the end of the day – these human service executives and financial professionals still understood that as Christians the ultimate bottom line requires us to never abandon the least of our brothers and sisters, but instead requires us to use the resources at our disposal to find a way to meet their human needs.

I was thinking recently about all the wonderful Catholic human services professionals that both my father’s career – and my own here at Catholic Charities – has allowed me the privilege of knowing over the years when I was reading about some of the dust-up that has erupted surrounding the House of Representative proposed Federal Budget, which was passed back on March 29th. Titled “The Path to Prosperity”, the House budget proposal advocates significantly reducing Federal spending on non-military programs – such as housing support for homeless people, the elderly, the disabled, children living in poverty, health care, financial market reforms, Medicaid, domestic and international food programs, and child tax credit refunds – all in an attempt towards significantly reducing the country’s $15 trillion budget deficit; additionally the budget calls for simplifying the tax code by closing loopholes and lowering the corporate and individual tax rate from 35% where it is currently to 25%. The response to the proposed House budget on a political basis was predictably swift and severe with the White House labeling it a radical Trojan Horse that was really nothing more then “thinly veiled social Darwinism”, but what I thought was particularly fascinating about reaction to this budget was the multiple responses that its publication generated among scholars and practitioners of Catholic social teaching. This was undoubtedly the case because the Chairman of the House Budget Committee and principle drafter of the “The Pathway to Prosperity” – Republican Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan – had appeared on various talk shows and in several interviews to say that his proposed budget sprang from the teachings of his Catholic faith, and that the animating principle behind the budget’s significant cuts in Federal non-military spending were rooted in his understanding of the Catholic principle of “subsidiarity”, which he defined as relegating decision making and action to the most local level – thereby severely limiting, in his view, government’s role in helping the poor and vulnerable.

The response to Ryan’s assertions by those in the academia who study Catholic social teaching were swift, and Ryan was sent no less then three separate letters – one from a group of 59 Catholic social justice leaders, religious and clergy, and the other two from professors of Religious Studies at both Georgetown and Marquette University – critiquing what they cited as Representative Ryan’s misuse of Catholic social teaching in a document that decimated needed Federal funding for programs that assist the poor and vulnerable. The letters took particular issue with what was deemed Ryan’s misunderstanding of the Catholic principle of subsidiarty. First formally developed in the Papal Encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII as a bulwark against collectivism, the principle consists of not one, but two main components: as Representative Ryan asserted, the first component of subsidiarity does indeed assert that the level of human organization closest to the human person (the individual, the family, the local community) should be encouraged to carry out those social functions they can best fulfill, however as a corollary component of subsidiarity, larger levels of human organization (such as the state or federal government) should provide assistance to the smaller units to ensure human necessities are met when the smaller units are unable to fulfill those necessities on their own. In this way, what subsidiarity really asks is that societal assistance be provided at “the lowest level possible”, but also at the “highest level necessary” in the words of theologian Meghan Clark. In addition, all three letters made reference to the fact that in Catholic social teaching the principle of subsidiarity is always inexorably linked to the principle of solidarity – especially solidarity with the poor and vulnerable. For his part – in response to these criticism, Representative Ryan responded by saying that his proposed budget does incorporate solidarity by recognizing a role for government in providing a basic safety net for the poor, but that it attempts to restore a balance between solidarity and subsidiarity by placing the onus for providing for the poor and vulnerable on individuals, families, local communities, religious organizations and charities first– he also added that the Church’s preferential option for the poor should not be mistaken for a “preferential option for big government.”

As someone who’s professional career is dedicated to spreading the principles of Catholic social teaching more broadly, I think that the on-going debate that has been generated regarding Representative Ryan’s citing of Catholic social teaching as an inspiration for his proposed budget – and the corrective letters sent by the practitioners and academics who study and try to embody that teaching in their work and their lives every day – is ultimately a good thing. As Representative Ryan himself admitted, the teachings of the Social Magisterium of the Church as to how to best advance the Common Good are matters of prudential judgment where people of good will can differ. It does not escape me, however, that I write this blog post in the week when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit – the Pentecost – the Birthday of our Church. In their role as teachers of the Faith, our Bishops have a specific responsibility regarding the promotion of Catholic teaching and its interpretation, a role that we believe that Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit will come sanctifies. It is for that reason that we Catholics should take particularly seriously the concerns of the United States Bishops Conference regarding the proposed budget in the “The Pathway to Prosperity”. In a letter sent to every Member of the House of Representatives on behalf of the Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Stephen Blaire, Chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development explained that the budget which was passed fails a “basic moral test” in that the “needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers, and families struggling to live in dignity in difficult economic times”; while acknowledging that the country’s budget deficit was a serious concern, the Bishops reminded Congress that the first priority for their actions was the “proposition that first, Congress must do no harm.”

Wise words from the Bishops. And as I close this blog post, my mind wanders back to those folks I mentioned earlier – all of those wonderful leaders and financial professionals in Catholic human services that I have been afforded the privilege to know. As I said before, many if not most of these women and men were quite personally and fiscally conservative, they knew well the scarcity of resources – human and financial; they understood the dangers of out of control deficits and spending money that you do not have – however, I am also sure that they understood the essentialness of the services that they provided to those in their care, and the essentialness of placing first the needs of the vulnerable as we sort out our spending priorities. They would recognize the wisdom of the Bishops admonition that – as we proceed as a country in sorting our collective priorities – our first order of business is to “first, do no harm”.

(In honor of this year’s International Week of the Deaf (September 19th thru 25th, 2011) – and in solidarity with our Deaf brothers and sisters both here in New York and across the globe – I have asked my colleague Sister Barbara Ann Sgro, Coordinator of Deaf Services for the Hudson Valley, to reflect on her work with and for the Deaf community here in the Archdiocese)

I am used to being asked questions about my religious vocation. There seems to be a natural curiosity for people when they first meet religious Sisters as they probe, “Why did you become a nun, what do nuns do?” Very gently I take the time to explain that I am a Sister, not a nun and that there is a difference between the two. I then proceed to share a little bit about my vocation. So some months after I began my current ministry as a Pastoral Worker with the Deaf, someone I had recently met said to me, “I’d like to ask you a question.” I was prepared, or so I thought …

The “someone” was Deacon Patrick Graybill, a Deaf Deacon from Rochester, NY who is highly revered in the international Deaf Community, and his question was loaded. “Why,” he basically asked, “do you, a hearing person who is still learning American Sign Language (ASL) want to work with the Deaf?” After some seconds (which felt like hours) of processing his question, I responded, “Because without the inclusion of the Deaf, the Church is not whole.”

Deacon Patrick smiled and gave me a quiet nod of affirmation. I relaxed a bit, but truthfully, I’m not sure why. Giving Deacon Patrick the wording of that answer was the easy part; unpacking it is the ongoing challenge of my ministry that I will share with you.

I came into Deaf ministry equipped primarily with a deep love for God’s people, particularly those whom society holds on its margins. I’m not sure the sign language I knew at the time really counted, I had taken an intro class in my early college years as part of my study for working with adults with intellectual disabilities. I knew words (or signs) like eat, toilet, and help. These hardly qualified for everyday conversation.

One of my first challenges was finding out that using the respectful “people first language” that was so much a part of me (e.g., people with intellectual disabilities, people who are deaf) was not the proper way to go. Getting to know the people I minister with taught me that if I was to be an effective pastoral minister, I had to let go of my idea of deafness as a disability. To them, being referred to as Deaf is a positive thing. It’s a source of pride and identity; it is not offensive at all. I was truly amazed by how readily the Deaf welcomed me into their world of Deaf Culture (We’ll talk about what that is in a few minutes.) Everyone was willing to “teach me” but I knew I couldn’t just rest in that. I sensed how important it would be for me to “earn my keep.”

Now here is where hearing people like me have to sort out some confusion. There is the physical condition of being born deaf; that gets a small “d”. But on the other hand, when you talk about someone in relation to his or/her identity within the Deaf Culture that gets a capital “D”. It was hard for me in the beginning to get used to referring to people as Deaf. But now I get it.

Deaf Culture also values Deaf schools and has its own social etiquette rules, e.g. it is actually not rude to walk between two people signing with one another. Deaf Culture is also built around the native language of the Deaf—American Sign Language (ASL). I often hear people say how beautiful this language is. This is true for me also, but even more true is that it is capable of expressing so much more than words ever could. I never realized before how different ASL was from Signed English, which is basically a word for word translation of English. ASL is a true language in and of itself, whereas Signed English is not a natural language but created in hope to make English more visible with one’s hands.

The more I learn about Deaf Culture, the more I realize how “Christian” Deaf Culture can be. I say this because it is rooted in community sharing and caring and respect for one another. I feel Deaf power at its best can be aligned with the social justice taught by Jesus—used for the common good of the community and not for personal gain.

Self –advocacy is another important part of Deaf Culture. Some of us may remember the Deaf President Now protest at Gallaudet University in 1988. Gallaudet University was the first institution for college level liberal arts education of the deaf and hard of hearing in the world. At that time in 1988, the University was seeking a new President. There were several highly qualified candidates. All of them were deaf except one. The students advocated for a Deaf President who culturally understood their needs. Then the hearing candidate was hired. The students held a week-long carefully-engineered protest. At the end of the week, the school replaced the new hearing President with a Deaf President. The University responded in a manner that was socially just.

The need for social justice is so much a part of the Deaf experience. Having the privilege to be in pastoral ministry with the Deaf, two of my primary responsibilies are to support the faith-life / religious and sacramental education of the Deaf and to ensure that Deaf are respected in ways that are socially just. These are very challenging tasks.

How can the Deaf live the Good News in fullness if their access to their Church and the Good News is limited? We are socially conditioned to understand that access basically means ramps, automatic doors and ample seats at the end of a row. But doesn’t access also mean having the opportunity to fully participate in one’s faith? Deaf people are often called “eye people.” Why? Because they take in everything visually. How can we challenge ourselves to make the Gospel more accessible using their primary input mode? I wonder in what ways we can make our Church buildings and our environmental designs more visually accessible. I also wonder how we can challenge ourselves to be more open in inviting the Deaf to their right to taking more active roles in our liturgies.

In 2009, the Pontifical Council for Health Care ministry focused on the hearing-impaired person in the Church. One of its outcomes is that we need to make the Gospel more accessible to the Deaf. Throughout our Archdiocese we facilitate religious education and adult faith formation programs. I have many questions. How might we dream and plan programs that are accessible to the Deaf? How can we tap into the rich faith of the Deaf so that the leaders among them can rise? How can we be more socially just in welcoming the Deaf into their rightful places in the Church. We definitely have technology to our advantage here.

There have been twelve Deaf priests and several Deaf deacons ordained in the United States since 1977. Amazing you are probably thinking, I’m thinking there are many more vocations out there. Their stories are powerful and filled with overcoming struggle. I am hopeful that we have the resolve to change this for the future generations to give glory to God. There is so much deep faith and so much more to be untapped.

Just a quick note to readers before I begin: this blog is NOT about environmental degradation – at least not in a physical sense. Although Catholic social teaching has many terrific things to say about our responsibility to be good stewards of this beautiful world and protect this essential goodness from human activities that could physically foul it, the focus of this blog another kind of human activity – one that is no less destructive and has unfortunately been in the news almost constantly lately – that brings about another type of human degradation…one not of the human environment per se but more alarmingly of the human person herself.

As I’m sure almost every reader is unfortunately aware – the news media of late has been riddled with stories of men in prestigious positions behaving very badly. Whether we are speaking of libidinous lawmakers, sports figures who definitely do not “play by the rules” or the increasing roster of “governors gone wild”, the news media is littered with stories of men in positions of power whose behavior shows a complete disregard – and lack of respect – for their families generally, but most especially for the women in their lives. To turn on the news over the past few years has been has been like watching an ongoing slideshow of tawdry male behavior. Recent months have only seen this trend continue…moving inexorably from the tragic: with story of former Senator John Edwards two-timing his cancer stricken wife with a celebrity obsessed groupie, then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger admitting after years of denying allegations of marital infidelity that he indeed did father a child with his housekeeper-mistress, to the ridiculous: culminating with the media circus concerning the recently resigned Congressman Anthony Wiener tweeting lewd self-portraits across the Ethernet to women he did not know.

In the midst of all of these public and personal tragedies and the multiple indignities they foist upon the innocent however, the one that stands out to me as the most outrageous – indeed the one that screams of the most misogynistic mindset – is the alleged sexual assault of a 32 year old widowed immigrant mother from Guinea by French politician and former International Monetary Fund Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn when the young African housekeeper came in to clean his $3,000 a night Presidential Hotel Suite in the Sofitel Hotel last month. Now, I have to admit that when this alleged assault first took place, I had never heard of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (or DSK as he is known to those “in the know”); I had however most definitely heard of the International Monetary Fund, or IMF. First established in the wake of the Second World War in 1945, its mandate was to assist struggling economies towards financial recovery. Building on the successes that it had in helping European economies to recover after the Great War, the IMF from the early 1960s onward went on to offer loans to nations in the developing world aimed at securing their own economic growth, an activity that earned the IMF a decidedly mixed reputation as an enforcer of strict “structural adjustments” – austerity programs mandated as a condition of receiving loans, the burden of which fell most heavily upon the poor. In the year 2000, the Jubilee Justice Campaign – which Blessed John Paul II and the United States Bishops’ Conference were major supporters of and which was a wonderful example of Catholic social teaching in action – succeeded in altering these “structural readjustments” undoing many of the most usurious conditions enforced on the poorest and most highly indebted of developing nations. In recent years, the IMF has begun a period of recovery and repentance and – after the financial collapse hit in 2008 – the fund roared back into prominence, bailing out the “newly” financially struggling economies of Ireland, Portugal and Greece.

It was during this period that Dominique Strauss-Kahn – or “DSK” – rose to prominence. A top French economics professor, Financial Minister, socialist philosopher and presumptive candidate for the French Presidency, DSK was a shrewd, capable financier who rescued the IMF from its from its less then illustrious past just in time to save the European economy. It was then – when he was basically acting as Europe’s wallet – that DSK had the encounter with the young African immigrant woman that would change both their lives: she in her work uniform carrying her cleaning supplies during her appointed rounds, he emerging unclothed from the bathroom of his Presidential hotel suite; when she apologized and tried to leave according to police, he chased her down, grabbed her, locked the door and physically assaulted her. She finally escaped, and when her co-workers at the hotel contacted police about the assault, DSK had already fled the high-class midtown hotel for a First Class seat on AirFrance bound for Paris. The police came on board to remove him handcuffed from the plane – had the jet successfully taken off, he would have been safe from extradition to face the charges against him.

During his rise, DSK – who has been married 3 times – developed a wide reputation as a serial seducer of women, earning him the moniker of being a “chaud lapin” (or “hot rabbit”) in French. In New York, the term that such slippery behavior would earn him is a much less cute nick-name – here, we would call him a “player”….of course, if he is found guilty of the activity which is alleged, he is something much, much worse than this – he is – plain and simple – a predator.

Reaction to DSK’s arrest and the allegations against him have been almost as extreme as the behavior that he has been charged with – and have exposed a difference of opinion between Americans and Europeans almost as wide as the ocean that separates us from one another. Here at Catholic Charities, a colleague of mine just returned from a trip to Scotland where she participated in a symposium that brought together people from all over the continent; as she was telling me about her trip, she said that DSK was very much on the mind of all the Europeans there, and that they were very upset that he had been arrested. He was – as the presumptive candidate for the French Presidency – in their words “the best hope for France”. Within France itself, the American justice system has come under attack for its treatment of DSK – with that country’s leading philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy denouncing the judge in DSK’s case for “pretending to take him (DSK) for a subject like any other” even though he is – in Levy’s words “a defender of proletarian nations and the fragile and vulnerable among us.”

Now here, I have to say that I am a major fan of our system of justice in the United States where every person is innocent until proven guilty. In this regard DSK is no exception…I also realize that as regards politics in Europe – from financial policy, to immigration issues, to xenophobia, to the on-going military campaign in Libya – the continent’s best and brightest minds are desperately needed on task. That being said, I guess what really disturbs me about some of these reactions is the near invisibility and lack of concern for the alleged victim of this crime – herself such a perfect example of the “proletarian…fragile and vulnerable among us” that you would think she was found in central casting. I must admit here that I am not really surprised by some of these opinions: living in New York and doing the work that I do has allowed me the opportunity to meet many people who work in international development – both at the United Nations and through religiously affiliated organizations. Most of the people that I have met have been some of the kindest and most dedicated servants of the common good that I have ever had the pleasure to know, but to be honest I do know some – the sophisticates mostly – whose attitudes, assumptions and quips about people they meet from the developing world make me question their true dedication to their chosen careers. That’s where frankly the idea for the title of this blog came from – how in the world can someone do a good job at constructing and promoting conditions that foster economic justice for all when in particular circumstances they treat those who would be the beneficiaries of those conditions as mere objects to be disregarded, used, thrown away. I think that it is here that Catholic social teaching can give us great insight into the attitudes we all need to foster full human flourishing for ourselves and others: Solidarity – as one of the 7 principles of Catholic social teachingis essential, but it is only built – as are all the other 6 Principles– on the 1st and foundational principle of our social teaching, namely respect for the life and dignity of every human person. Without this firm foundation, our dedication to the true common good for us and for others is about as secure as house built upon sand.

Soon after his arrest, DSK resigned his position at the IMF, prompting an international search for a replacement for him. Traditionally, the roll of Managing Director has been chosen from candidates who hail from the wealthy industrialized countries of Europe, with a French incumbent leading it for 36 of its 65 years. The search for a new director still continues. I myself have my own suggestion of a candidate who I met just recently that believe has the vision that is required to do an effective job. I was reminded of this candidate during a phone call with the colleagues that I traveled to Africa with this past September with Catholic Relief Services. During that call, my colleague Anna recounted our visit to a little village a few hours drive from Dire Dawa in Eastern Ethiopia where we went to see a well that was drilled in the past year by the community with assistance received from CRS. During our visit, the village spokesperson and manager of the water project – with all the villagers assembled around him – spoke proudly about the work that their community undertook to get the water system up and running. When he was asked by one of our group “What changes the provision of the well water had brought”, his eyes filled with tears, and said quietly: “We had no bad water to cause dehydration or dysentery because of the well – none of our children died this year”. All that were around him hung their heads – not in shame but in sheer emotion.

I’m not sure what the specific skill sets required are to fill the position of Managing Director of the IMF – and I’m not sure that that he would possess all the technical knowledge – but certainly that manager of that well who I met outside Dire Dawa, Ethiopia would not only understand the importance of the work of development; he would also have his priorities strait…unlike so many who think they see the forest – but need to see the trees as well.